


if you love me let me know (if i love you, let me go)

by veausy



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Freeform, Misunderstandings, One Shot, Pining, Texting, eleven is bad at feelings, we been knew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-19 23:52:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18980923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veausy/pseuds/veausy
Summary: Mike is blurry and hard to make out, since the room is illuminated only by the desk lamp she’d had the forethought to power on sometime mid-afternoon. His smile is luminescent, though, and the soft look in his eyes is something that she hasn’t seen since the spring, when everything was different, better.She smiles at him dopily. “These dreams are the best,” she mumbles.





	if you love me let me know (if i love you, let me go)

**18:02    June 5     Mike Wheeler**  
Hey! I checked the airline app and it looks like you flew in ok  
Text me when you get to your new place, we’re all excited to see pics!

 **22:55     June 5     Mike Wheeler**  
Saw your Snap story! Everything looks amazing!  
You must be busy with it all, just text me when you get a chance

 **11:19     June 6     Mike Wheeler**  
Morning, El  
How was the first night in NY??

 **17:56     June 6     Mike Wheeler  
**El?

 **22:43     June 7     Mike Wheeler**  
Max said you guys Facetimed this morning and everything’s going well  
I’m glad!  
Text me when you get a chance :)

 **15:22     June 9     Mike Wheeler  
**Is everything ok?

 **09:32     June 15     Mike Wheeler**  
I heard you start work today! I know you’ll be amazing  
This was the day you dreamed of since you declared your major in freshman spring  
You’ve been studying so hard and it’s going to pay off!

 **00:03     July 5     Mike Wheeler**  
We got warted and lot up some fireworks in the bark yard  
Wafted  
WASTED  
The last one was pink and blue and went really high and spread almost across the whole sky and make me thing of you  
I hope you ok and happy  
I’m sorry for whatever I did

 **12:39     Aug 7     Mike Wheeler**  
Saw Hop today, he was wearing a pink Birthday Princess tiara courtesy of your care package he said  
Can’t believe he’s 55 already  
He looks good! I think you’d be happy with how smiley he’s been  
Anyway he said he’s going to visit you next month, I’m happy you’ll get to see him before you move into the dorms!

 **23:44     Nov 21     Mike Wheeler  
**I really miss you

\--

Tuesdays are El’s worst days, because she has four meetings back-to-back and a lunch break so short that she has to settle for inhaling vending machine food in the lonely privacy of her cubicle.

She wakes up in a cold sweat and with tears streaming down her cheeks from a dream where she sobs with pain before unclenching her hand, where all the pain is, and her eyes pop open to find that her hand had been holding Mike’s, and she’s lying on the very edge of a cliff, and now that she’s let him go, he’s plummeting with his eyes wide on her face and his mouth open on a silent scream, and she can’t look at him when he lands on the hard ground beneath him, so she scrunches up and wrenches herself back onto solid ground – her bed, where she sits up and stares at the wall for a long time, getting her breathing back to normal.

But this is not the first time she’s dreamt it, nor will it be the last.

She listens to the quiet tick of her brewing coffee from the kitchen as she stares at her crowded closet, hands on her hips and hair in disarray. When she approaches the hanger with her loosest collared blouse, she catches a glimpse of her exhausted slouch in the mirror, the deep blue bags under her eyes, mottling further her already gray face.

She’s got one arm in a sleeve and her head peeking through the top when the Keurig beeps, so she swings her door open and slumps out, free hand still struggling with the satin to find the second sleeve.

“Oh.”

She freezes in place, droopy eyes widening and body twisting sideways to preserve her modesty. It feels like she’s been doused in ice water when her gaze lands on the lanky shape lounging on the couch. Mike’s hair is longer than it was the previous spring, his freckles less stark amid the winter months. He’s wearing clothes that look small on him, one foot lowered to the floor and the other on the cushion beside him, one hand wringing nervously at one pant leg.

“El, hey,” Dustin greets from behind her, closing the bathroom door as he steps through it. “Sorry I didn’t give you advance notice – I texted you when we came back here last night. This is my roommate, El. El, this is –“

“Mike,” she breathes, forgetting about her state of undress and listing weakly against the door jamb. 

“Hi, El.”

Dustin looks between them shrewdly. “You’ve met?”

“Oh, we go way back,” Mike intones, and try as she might, El cannot sense any anger in his voice, or any resentment. He sounds almost relieved. She never did deserve him. “Best friends since freshman orientation.”

Dustin nods then, and when she glances at him, she sees the odd purse of his lips. Before she can study it any closer, he accosts her and helps her to tug her shirt down over her bra, brushing his hands over the hem and fixing her lapels. She swallows thickly and wonders where to go from here. “Yeah,” she confirms, voice low enough to be a whisper.

“But El’s been in the City since summer,” Dustin says conversationally, walking toward the Keurig when he realizes she’s not planning to walk through the living room – mere feet away from Mike – and pulling the mug out from beneath it, stirring in creamer carefully. “Never mentioned you,” he continues, face hidden behind his long curls. She curses him out internally, but keeps her mouth shut and her eyes lowered.

“Distance does that sometimes,” Mike offers softly, kindly, and she can’t look at him, so when Dustin walks over with his hand outstretched, she snatches the coffee from him and steps back into the hallway to retreat to her room.

“I’m really running late,” she murmurs, brushing her hair behind her ear and only then noticing how matted it is and what a sight she must make. With a discreet cringe, she curls in on herself and keeps taking small steps away from the threshold where Dustin is watching her with his eyes narrowed. Mike still sits behind him, hand now dropped between his thighs and posture stiffer, but she can’t look at him, she can’t look at him. “Sorry, I can’t – I have to. Yeah. Got early meetings. Four. I'm late.”

“Nice seeing you, El,” she hears behind her just as her door swings shut, and she chugs the scalding coffee down like punishment.

With shaking hands, she untangles her hair and sticks it into an unkempt bun, pinching her cheeks red and brushing tinted balm over her lips clumsily. She looks horrible, not at all like the person she’s been trying to be ever since she left Chicago, not at all like someone who has any right to do what she’s been doing ever since June sixth. But Mike has seen her now, and there’s nothing left to do about it, and she’s got meetings for the next four hours, so she grabs her bag and speeds out into the hallway.

While Dustin has disappeared again, Mike is standing now, leaned against the wall beside the open window and gazing unseeingly at the street below. He looks up when he hears her rushed footsteps, wide eyes shifting over her body, lingering on her bare face. “You look good,” he says genuinely, and it's not true, and it hurts too much for her to even try to respond. So she nods curtly with a tight smile and gives him a wave before rushing through the door and out into the street.

\--

Dustin’s sitting at the dining table with his chin in one hand and his eyes on the door when she gets back in that evening.

“Hey,” she says casually, hanging her coat near the door and fiddling with the ends of her sleeves as she approaches him.

“So, you and Mike,” he begins, leaning back in his seat and studying her with a squint. “What’s that about?”

“Nothing,” she snaps defensively, before she can even gauge the angle of his insinuation – or lack thereof. So long spent hiding everything deep inside of herself, and all it takes is a well-placed dig for it to come spilling out.

“You know he’s moving here in January, right?”

El gapes. “What?”

“Got a job at PWC,” her roommate confirms with a nod, arms crossing over his chest. “My firm’s bar crawl ended up on the same block last night, and he was drinking alone after his final meeting with the HR people. We started chatting and bonded. Before he got wasted and I had to bring him here to sleep it off.”

El lowers herself into the nearest chair, dropping her bag to the ground. Part of her protests at the knowledge of Mike drinking so heavily, but a bigger part protests on behalf of her vulnerable little heart. “No.”

Dustin squints harder. “What do you mean, ‘no’? I thought he said you two are best friends?”

After a long silence spent staring at the tabletop and wringing her hands in her lap, she finally inhales deeply. “He was always going to move to California. That was his dream, he wanted to be where it was sunny and where people were nice, that’s what he always said.”

“Well,” Dustin shrugs, “people change.” When she declines to respond any further, he gives her one more tense pause before setting his elbows on the table with a sigh. “Seriously, what’s going on? I’ve never seen you this spooked.”

“I just don’t understand,” she confesses, voice quivering and eyes dry. “He wasn’t supposed to come here – this isn’t what was supposed to happen.”

“What was supposed to happen?” Dustin’s more serious now than she’s ever seen him, eyes soft and sympathetic.

“I was supposed to get away, and he was supposed to – to let me. All I’ve been doing is trying to force him to _let_ me.”

Her friend sighs deeply and leans back with a nod. “Maybe you overestimated yourself. Or underestimated him.” His finger comes up to rub the sharp edge of the Formica between them, the soft susurrus turning almost deafening in the still air around them. “What are you trying so hard to get away from?”

She glances up into his eyes, then down at her lap, then out at the dark hallway through which she can just make out the shape of her closed door. “Mike.”

\--

Two days later, she walks into the café in the lobby of her company’s high-rise to see Mike at the register, cradling a blueberry scone as he swipes his credit card.

Somehow losing all control of her limbs, as she seems to at any sight of him, she halts right inside the door, eyes hungrily drinking in the elegant slope of his nose, the curve of his full lips. His smile at the cashier is sweet and friendly, open in a way El has never been. Even from the start, from the first week of college, she remembers how shapeless she’d always felt next to him, how ugly and naked and unsightly. Where he'd made friends left and right without even trying to be charming, she sat at his side and felt angular, stiff, like she wasn’t made to be in the spot she’d carved out for herself. Or maybe Mike had been the one to carve it out for her. But then he must not have known who she was – because it wasn’t right. The fit wasn’t right. She wasn't made right for him.

And in the midst of all this constant self-deprecation and anguish, she still had time to stare after him besottedly and cling. How horrible. And to think, she’d almost gotten away.

As she stands there with her cheeks hot and her eyes wet, Mike pockets his wallet and turns around, gaze falling on her instantly. His cheeks stretch as another wide smile overtakes them, soft and sweet and _real_. Everything about him has always been so _real_ , while she’s never known herself to be anything but manufactured.

Before he can call out to her or start to walk in her direction, she swivels on her heel and slams out of the café, speed walking through the lobby to hide in an alcove with a potted plant and a loveseat. She pulls out her phone and scrolls through her emails as she breathes harshly, trying to calm down.

Seeing him once had been a shock; seeing him again is proving to be devastating. She doesn’t know how to do anything anymore, not if he’ll be around to witness it all.

After rubbing her wet eyes roughly and exhaling, she glances sideways, gaze catching on the shiny window of the taxi parked on the curb. Its reflection shows a giant sign just at the top of the building she’s in, unlit because it’s mid-afternoon, but she can make out the lowercase letters perfectly: p _w_ c.

She scoffs, then digs her face into her hands and sobs silently.

\--

Everything calms after that for a time, short enough that the wounds of seeing his face are still raw, but long enough that she’s lulled into a false sense of safety. She’s nursing a chamomile tea in the coffeeshop she’s taken to hiding in, two streets away from her building and around a corner, when her phone buzzes three times in quick succession, screen lit excitedly.

 **19:33     Dec 19     Mike Wheeler**  
There’s an opening in a one-bedroom on the floor right above yours  
Dustin and I met with the leasing office just now, and if I submit my deposit by Friday, the place is mine  
Tell me if you don’t want me there

 **19:35     Dec 19     Mike Wheeler**  
You know what, two minutes is all you’ll get  
Not like you’ve made a habit of responding anyway  
Nice to meet you, neighbor

She blinks at the phone dumbly and swipes at her tired eyes.

Then, she opens up her chat with Dustin and types, _Fuck you._

\--

She gets sick the day before Christmas eve, two days after Dustin has flown home for the holidays.

In bed, sweaty and bloated and hating life, she manages to dial his number and ask whether he keeps any medicine in his room, to which the answer is a panicked no and an inquisition about her fever, her nausea, and her overall wellbeing. She lets him mother her for a few minutes before groaning, “’Kay, bye,” and hanging up.

She’s barely lucid over the next few hours, tossing and turning under sweat-damp sheets and trying to follow the passage of time by staring at the screen of her phone every once in a while, sometimes taking several seconds to actually understand what the big numbers at the top are telling her.

It’s somewhere between the hours of nine and eleven at night that her bedroom door creaks open and she turns drooping eyes to greet whatever ghost has come to cohabitate.

Mike is blurry and hard to make out, since the room is illuminated only by the desk lamp she’d had the forethought to power on sometime mid-afternoon. His smile is luminescent, though, and the soft look in his eyes is something that she hasn’t seen since the spring, when everything was different, better.

She smiles at him dopily. “These dreams are the best,” she mumbles.

His eyebrows tilt, and as he gets closer she sees the little tray in his hands. “Dustin told me where the spare key was. The pharmacy was all out of NyQuil, but I asked a few neighbors and got you a variety of stuff, depending on how you feel. Got you soup from across the street, too,” he gestures with a nod, and El spots gentle steam rising from a large white bowl.

“No, don’t do that,” she mumbles back, rolling to the side and trying to scoot away to make room for him, fiddling with her covers without much success. “We always run out of time when you do that.”

“Do what?” he asks with amusement, setting the tray on her desk and sorting through boxes of medication carefully.

“No, c’mere,” she whispers, trying to lift her blankets with arms that are too weak to help her. “It’s always over too quickly.”

Mike looks up, eyes sharp. “What is?”

“Stop being diff’cult,” she whines, and her sweaty hair is clinging to her cheek, but she’s desperate to feel him pressed against her, the last time she dreamed of this was months ago. She’s parched.

He steps closer, tucking her in and then backing off when she whines more abruptly. “What, El?”

“Climb in,” she snaps, patting the mattress limply.

“El … “

The tears rise in her eyes without permission, but most things in her dreams happen without her explicit consent. Not once has she ever had the choice to keep holding tightly onto Mike over the cliff, or to pull him up to lie safely beside her. She digs her face into her pillow and sobs silently, and it seems to startle him enough that he sets a knee onto the bed immediately, shuffling close to lie on top of the covers beside her. “Hey, hey, I’m here,” he tells her, alarm running through his voice.

Her wet lashes clump together when she looks at him through them, sees the hand he’s got hovering over her waist. When she merely stares at it, he turns red and lets it settle gently on her hip. Between one breath and the next, El curls closer and presses her face against the juncture of his neck and shoulder, burying her nose in the soft, warm skin she finds there. He smells just like he always has, like grapefruit and something else that’s always been unnamable. Something fresh, and comforting, and very _Mike_. His breath hitches at the first contact of skin on skin, and the faint weight of his long fingers perched on her hip wavers.

They twitch once, twice when she keeps staring at them, and then she sighs happily and closes her eyes, and goes out like a light.

\--

In the morning, her fever’s broken, and she winces as she pulls the damp sheets off herself, bringing her knees up to her chest and sitting there motionlessly, pressed up against the headboard with her chin on her knees. She zones out and lets her eyes swim over the dark patch of shadow inside her closet, trying to recall what she needs to pack for her flight home.

It’s not until she turns to climb over the side of the mattress that she notices the four packs of medications stacked neatly beside a glass of water on her bedside table.

Frozen in place, she recalls the tray and the soup and the warm body she’d pressed herself against – all remarkably soft and unsaturated, indistinguishable from a dream.

There is no sign of Mike anywhere in the apartment, and she runs a hot shower for herself before sticking a bunch of stuff into a suitcase without looking at it. She’s on her way out the door when she actually opens the messages that had accumulated there since the early morning.

 **08:52     Dec 24     Mike Wheeler**  
I wanted to stay later to make sure you were okay, but my boss called me in for some stats work  
You seemed to sleep ok all through the night so I hope you feel better today

 **09:48     Dec 24     Mike Wheeler**  
Left you some meds btw, take whatever you need  
But I felt your skin before leaving and you weren’t as hot as last night so I think your fever’s down  
Drink lots of water

 **12:14     Dec 24     Mike Wheeler**  
I think Dustin mentioned you’re flying home today, but please reschedule if you’re not feeling well  
Don’t want to have a total breakdown on a plane, those are gross to throw up on

 **14:29     Dec 24     Mike Wheeler**  
Doubt I’ll get to see you when we're back home, so  
Merry Christmas, El  
Happy New Year  
I hope it gets easier for us, eventually  
I’ve missed you every day since you left

If she cries the whole way through the flight, the only thing to speak for it is her bright red, swollen eyes and runny nose as she walks through the deserted airport. Pulling her into a tight hug at the baggage carousel, Hopper doesn’t ask.

\--

Life continues as usual in January, and as El embarks on her final semester with the company everything seems to be tinged with an edge of urgency. She was doing so well until Mike came along – but now she has to seek answers elsewhere.

She gets drunk during a networking mixer that her department holds at the end of the month, quiet giggles turning into moodiness turning into despair.

After Evan from three cubicles down drops her off at her apartment building, she climbs the stairs gracelessly and lets herself in after missing the keyhole twice.

Dustin and Mike are playing video games on the living room floor, jostling one another with sharp elbows and yelling. She thinks she’ll be able to escape down the hallway without arousing either’s attention, but she loses her hold on her phone, and it smashes onto the floor with a sound that echoes.

The video game goes silent and the boys look up at her with similar surprise.

She smiles awkwardly. “Sorry. ‘Gnore me.”

Dustin rises to his feet. “You okay? Your makeup’s smudged.”

“Oh,” she murmurs, brushing a knuckle over an eyelid and staring at the stain of eyeshadow on it. “Yeah, fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” Dustin says, voice turning dangerous. He seems to be making an assumption about the situation from her appearance, the fact that she’s only getting home past one in the morning, and the small hiccup she emits as she leans on the wall. “What happened?”

“We had the mixer tonight,” she tells him, trying to slide past him and hide out in the bathroom. Everything feels hazy and muffled, but the way Mike is watching her silently is cutting. “Had one too many.”

“You have tear-stains on your face, what the fuck,” Dustin thunders, blocking her way.

She blinks, trying to recall when she’d cried. Probably when Evan had mentioned that his girlfriend had dumped him and blocked him on all social media, so he had no way to even find out what he’d done wrong. If she thinks harder, she can sort of recollect Evan tearing up, too.

“Oh, I was, um, talking to a coworker about something. We got emotional,” she manages to say, still trying to edge past her roommate without success.

Dustin tuts and then disappears into the kitchen, accompanied by the soft sound of drawers opening and water being poured. El blinks at the doorway through which he’d disappeared and turns back to their guest, who’s watching her with a worried look on his face. “El – “

“No,” she says, walking with purpose now in her haste to get away, “no.”

The padding of socked feet behind her doesn’t register until a firm hand is curling around her elbow and swinging her back around, tug sharp but gentle. “You have reasons, you must have reasons. Just tell me that it's something I did,” he pleads, and in the darkness of the corridor his eyes are bottomless, enough to drown in. She’s been drowning since the first time she looked at them.

“Nothing, you didn't,” she slurs, trying to pull her arm out of his grasp. “Mike, lemme go.”

“That makes it worse,” he says with a shaking voice, and he’s so tall, she could press herself to his chest and be enveloped by him fully. How many dreams have been about that? She's lost count. He’s wearing a loose hoodie, soft-looking and cozy. “You never even properly told me to fuck off. Three years, El, don’t I deserve at least an in-person fuck-off? Ghosting me like we met once and I rubbed you the wrong way is fucking disrespectful, don’t you think?”

“Mike,” she grits out lowly, still fighting his grip. His fingers are warm, sending tingles up her arm. “Mike, let me go.”

“Tell me.”

“Mike, let me go,” she repeats, eyes watering.

“El, you owe me this.”

“I was close, Mike – I was so close before you came along. I was almost there. It would have been a few more months, and I could come back,” she sniffles, hardly noticing the hot streaks of tears pouring from her eyes. Mike’s watching her shrewdly, and neither of them is fighting the contact of their skin anymore. “You ruined it, Mike, you – you came here and you just fucking – you ruined everything. It took me three months to know that I couldn’t come back, I wasn’t ready, and I spent all of August straight fighting with Northwestern to let me stay on here for the academic year, to figure out tuition and find a place to live and fucking – stay away, I just wanted to stay away. It was so hard, but I did it, and I was going to keep doing it – why? _Why_? Why did you come h _e_ re?”

Like she’s burned him, Mike lets go of her, and she hadn’t realized that his touch was the only thing that was keeping her standing, so she topples, back hitting the wall and sliding down its length until she’s rolled into a ball on the floor. He’s standing above her, lips parted and eyes horrified, when Dustin says something that doesn’t quite reach her through the rush in her ears, and then Mike strides back into the living room. Seconds later, the slam of the front door echoes through the apartment.

El sobs wetly into her knees and wishes she’d had the capacity to be someone other than who she is, that she’d been able to find a way to stop herself from hurting that didn’t end up hurting the person who deserved the pain even less.

When her cries subside and she raises her head again, Dustin is sitting across from her, leaned against the opposite wall. There’s a glass of water sitting modestly between them. She gulps it down gratefully and then they stare at each other.

“You’re in love with him,” he finally ventures, voice rusty from disuse.

She nods infinitesimally, wiping her nose with the end of one sleeve.

“You’re got a shitty way of showing it,” he snorts.

She nods again and lets the back of her head thump against the wall. “Yeah.”

“So what was the plan, he was doing to stay back in Chicago, and you’d stay here, and everything would be okay forever?”

“There was no plan,” she sniffles, staring at the shadows on the ceiling. The only sound around them is the drone of the refrigerator and the soft idling music of the video game still paused on the TV. “I got a summer internship, and the week before I was supposed to fly out I saw Mike kissing someone at one of the last house parties of the semester. Some girl who'd had a crush on him for months. I hadn’t realized, until then, how deep in it I was. I felt like he’d crawled into my chest and fucking shredded it.” She swallows, and then a comfortable silence falls over them as Dustin waits patiently for her to continue. “And then as the summer went on, I realized how much better I felt when he wasn’t constantly around anymore, and I wasn’t always wishing for what I couldn’t have. The company kept me so busy, and it was like my brain was finally working at full capacity.”

“So you stayed.”

“So I called up Northwestern and said that my boss was willing to keep me for the full academic year, and since I graduate in May anyway, this could be my study-abroad, you know? Same kinds of credits. NYU was accommodating too, because the person I’d been doing the thesis with over the summer sent a letter to the Dean assuring her that I’d be a great addition to the student body. But that took so much work and constant emails and meetings and – it was exhausting. My dad had to come here and help me get set up, and it’s only because of him that I even found your roommate posting.”

Dustin smiles faintly, nodding at the mention of Hopper, with whom he’d bonded extensively over the week that El had spent moving in from her summer apartment. His knees are folded with his forearms piled atop them, fingers interlinked in front of him, and El is grateful that he isn’t trying to comfort her with hugs and touches – something that she’s always abhorred. Except from Mike. Mike's touch heals, replenishes. What a way she's found to thank him for it.

“I would have walked at the graduation ceremony back in Chicago, and a full year would have passed, and I would have been able to see him again without hurting all over my body. And then – “

“He came,” Dustin finishes softly.

“He came.”

“Be honest with me,” he lilts, shaking a curl out of his face lazily. “How likely is it that you’d have actually gone and faced him in May?”

El closes her eyes tightly and shakes her head.

“See, that’s the problem. What you’re doing isn’t working, and it never would have. And if you really were best friends for three years, don’t you think it’s only right for him to expect a decent goodbye from you? If you’re brave enough to cut him off like this, you should be brave enough to look at his face as you do it.”

“You don’t get it,” she whimpers, bringing her hands up to bury her face in. “You don’t get how much it hurts.”

“He doesn’t know all that, El. All he knows is that his best friend ditched him without any explanation, started screening his calls and texts, and just seems to hate him now.”

“Isn’t it better,” she starts, cutting herself with a thick swallow. “Isn’t it better if I free him of me? That was the point, to let him be with whomever he wanted, without my feelings getting in the way. If I have to watch it happen with someone else – I’d – I’d rather die, Dustin.”

He scoffs, kicking her foot with his own across the hallway. “Quit with the melodrama. You’ll be fine. You’re not a child, you’re not in high school. Do better for yourself, El. If you keep letting it go this way, it won’t be long before you’ll really regret it.”

When he stands and makes his way back to the kitchen with her empty glass, El manages to climb to her own unstable feet and drop herself onto her mattress. Despite her exhaustion, she hardly sleeps through the night.

\--

She's not courageous enough to text or call, but she passes Mike in the crowded space of their joint lobby on Monday morning. Their eyes meet, and he looks open, friendly, like if she gives the signal, he'll come over and do whatever she asks.

He's so soft, he's always been. He's made himself into a cushion for her through the years when she'd tried to learn who she was, how not to be someone who cuts people up without knowing about her own sharp edges. But now she knows, and she's using them purposefully, and he's still standing there, waiting to be maimed.

Swallowing down the acidity climbing up her throat, the guilt and the shame, she smiles at him just barely, but the effect is huge. His whole face brightens and he grins, teeth and all, until she disappears around the corner. 

\--

Later that week is Mike’s birthday, and Dustin manages to amass a group of his new work friends at their apartment for a small party, even arranging for Will, Lucas, and Max to fly out for the weekend.

The crisp February air wafts in through the open windows of the living room, but with alcohol spreading through everyone’s bloodstream, the chill is hardly noticeable.

El greets Mike at the door with a curt apology for their last encounter and a smile, all too little for what she’s done to him, to them, but he accepts it with kind eyes and a hug. Her chest feels too tight and too empty with his arms around her, and her skin feels too small for her heart, and she squeezes her eyes shut tight against the emotions that rise up within her like a wave.

Throughout the night, she spots Mike lingering with old Chicago friends and new New York friends, cuddling up close to everyone and participating intently in conversations that range from raucous to intimate.

El brings out a small red velvet cake with candles burning prettily in the dimmed lights of the living room, and the hush that falls over the crowd as they wait for Mike to blow them out is wrought with chaotic energy. Two people she doesn’t know are in the corner kissing disgustingly, ignorant of the entire purpose of the get-together.

As Mike walks up to her and stares at the candles, she lets her eyes rove over his face, feeling safe in greedily storing him in her heart and her memory when his own gaze is averted. She’s surprised when his big eyes jump to hers and linger, something heavy and intense coloring his expression. Without averting his gaze, he leans in and blows out the candles all at once, thin filter of smoke rising between their faces like a gentle veil.

But then the group gathered around them whoops happily, and Lucas and Dustin sneak up behind him and grab his head firmly, smashing it into the cake. Taken aback, El squeaks and drops the paper box that had housed it, looking at the mess of frosting splattered over the floor and smeared all over Mike’s face.

He laughs cheerfully when Will hands him a paper towel to wipe with, turning away from her and walking to the bathroom. El continues to stand there long after the guests have broken up into groups and Dustin carries out the ‘real’ cake he’d hidden in the freezer, which gets cut up and passed around quickly. She’s still standing there and staring at the box at her feet when Mike sidles up to her side, face and hair wet from washing. His black button-up still bears traces of the cream cheese icing, and she touches one finger to one of the stains gently. He watches this quietly.

“You’re not eating,” he says after a moment.

“Not hungry,” she returns.

“You didn’t eat anything all night.”

She blinks, surprised that he’d noticed. From what she’d seen, he’d been busy flitting about and socializing while she watched from hidden corners like an asshole. “Yeah.”

“El,” someone says behind her, and she turns to see Max walking over and lifting the dilapidated box from the floor, gesturing her toward the kitchen. “Come help me with the dishes?”

Without even glancing at Mike, she follows her friend out of the room. As soon as they’re around the corner, Max dumps the box into the garbage and swivels around, hands on her hips. “What are you doing?”

El blinks with surprise once more. “What?”

“Look, I know that you deal with things in your own weird, stunted way, and you have no idea what it means to be emotionally mature,” Max waves her hand in the air vaguely, eyes rolling. “But he’s been sending you signals all fucking night, so what are you doing?”

“What?” she repeats, eyes round.

“You’ve had a thing for him since you met, so don’t tell me that now that he’s finally acting on it –“

“He’s not,” El argues weakly, eyes jumping to the empty doorway and then back to her friend. “He’s literally not, what are you talking about?”

“El,” Max breathes, closing her eyes and rubbing two fingers on each of her temples. “He’s been fucked up over you since June. Why are you like this?”

“Like what,” El snaps. “Look, I’m sure he has. We were very close, and what I did was sudden and mean and out of character. But please don’t pretend to see something that isn’t there.”

“'Isn’t there'?”

“He’s spent all night flirting with random people all over the apartment and sometimes sending me a smile or two when our eyes crossed paths. I’ll deal with it, okay? I’m trying to deal with it currently. I don’t know how to heal myself, and maybe what I was doing wasn’t the way to get there, but I was trying. Being around him sure as hell wasn’t going to solve my problems. But he’s here now, which changes the game and makes it that much harder, and I’ve been fucking in love with him for going on four years, so if you could – please – just – let me breathe?”

Max smiles then, an odd look on her face, and El watches her with confusion for a moment before her friend tilts her head and singsongs, “Hey, Mike.”

El closes her eyes and breathes in deeply. When she opens them again, Max is gone. Mike is slowly ambling into the room, empty wine bottles in hand, which he gestures with lamely, as though to justify his entrance.

El just stands there, defeated, and watches his approach with eyes that feel dead and expressionless, empty.

There’s a series of gentle clinks as he sets the bottles down on the ground beside the trash can, and when he straightens again, his eyes are sparkling. “We should talk.”

“Don’t really see what’s left to say. You’ve heard everything,” she tells him stiffly.

“No, see, you’re not going to do that again,” he returns with a vaguely threatening grin. He steps up close, positioned between her and the door, arms crossed over his chest. “That’s been your M.O. thus far and it’s shitty. It’s literally the worst way of handling things that I’ve ever seen.”

El doesn’t respond, cheeks heating.

“You know what was hardest of all?” Mike asks, voice low and intimate like it would get when they had conversations about their futures, their families, their pasts. “You kept talking to everyone else like normal, like your life was going on just fine despite the hole you’d gouged in mine.”

“Mike,” she begins.

“I think you’ve had enough time to say things,” he shakes his head, staring at the ceiling. “I certainly gave you time while I filled up your messages.”

“Mike,” she whispers.

“You’ve got some loyal people around you, I’ll give you that,” he continues, as though she hadn’t spoken. “I asked everyone we know, and nobody divulged why you suddenly wanted to get away from me, what I’d done to make you hate me so much, why you’d never cared about me enough to dignify the end of our friendship with something more than complete silence. I ran into Hopper a few times, and he weaseled his way out of each conversation in a way I really admire. Pretended he knew nothing, even though there’s no way he wouldn’t have asked you about it after the first time I brought it up.”

“He really cares about you, it was hard for him,” she chokes out when he pauses, and he acknowledges it with a small nod.

“And I got sick of sitting on my ass and pitying myself, so I followed you. I applied for jobs all along the east coast, and by some miracle I got an interview with PWC with a start date in January – it was like the universe was stepping in.” After a moment of quiet thought, he snorts. “But you’re a force even the universe can’t reckon with.”

“Mike,” she pleads, and he finally looks at her, takes in her red eyes and her quivering lip, uncrosses his arms and steps closer.

“Yes?”

“You never looked at me the same way I looked at you,” she begins. “Three years, and not once did you even see me looking.”

“Did you see _me_ looking?” he asks, face twisting with something foreign.

“You weren’t.”

“No, _you_ weren’t. I was hanging off you since freshman orientation, following you around like a puppy, eager at your beck and call,” he argues, growing restless and irate. “What, did you think me signing up for at least one of your classes each semester was a coincidence?”

El blinks. “You said you needed those for your minor.”

“Yeah,” he yells, “a minor I declared the week you declared it as your major!”

"You were kissing Holly at the year-end party in May."

Mike pales, raising his hands in supplication. "Wait, no, _she_ kissed _me_. You saw her chasing me all year, you know I wasn't interested, El. Come on, you know me, you know me better than that."

Her lips purse but she keeps glaring at him, shoulders high.

"El, I literally moved to New York for you. I'm taking three online classes from Chicago and it's a pain in my ass, I'm almost broke from how much I spent on my first month's rent here, and I have basically forced Dustin into letting me bumble around the dregs of your life. I didn't find out about the one-bedroom upstairs by _chance_."

“Then why – “

“Because you fucking terrify me!” he says, voice still loud but posture defensive. “You had me wrapped around your finger, I thought I would die if you’d stopped talking to me over something as dumb as my _feelings_.” He pants, shaking his head with derision. “But, look, I survived. And I spent some weeks wondering if you’d figured it out, if you were that disgusted with me and with the idea of me loving you, that you’d fly halfway across the country to get away.”

“Mike,” she repeats for the hundredth time, hands raising slightly in an instinctual attempt to touch him, but his alert eyes on them make her drop them to her sides again.

"Dustin finding me was a miracle. I was on my fourth scotch and started wailing about how the love of my life abandoned me and cut me off, and when I woke up and you were standing there, it was like - it was surreal. I didn't think I'd get another chance."

One tear finally skids down her cheek, and she nods. "I'm sorry."

“We both fucked up,” he finally says, weary. “But I love you. And it hurts me that you keep running.”

El lets her eyes run over the planes of his face, openly and without fear, for the first time in almost a year. His cheeks are rosy with inebriation and frustration, but his eyes when they land on her are still soft and kind and patient, like they’ve always been. She takes a small step toward him, and when he only smiles wider, she takes another, and another. "I love you, too."

When she’s close enough for her nose to graze his shirt, she does what he’s wanted to do since the first day she met him, and buries her face in his chest. His arms, when they rise to wrap around her, feel like coming home. "Hey," he mumbles into her hair after a long pause. "My wish came true."

\--

 **10:44     May 13     Mike Wheeler  
**Where are you

 **10:56     May 13     Mike Wheeler  
**I’m waiting near the stage, they already announced the Bachelors of Science so we’ll be walking like any minute

 **10:58     May 13     Mike Wheeler  
**El I swear if you fucking do this to me againdask fd

He hums his surprise into her mouth when she pounces, phone falling to the grass beneath their feet. Her lips pull up at the corners as she presses them against his, arms winding tight around his neck, and the close proximity causes both of their caps to tilt and fall off their heads.

“Hi,” she breathes when she pulls away, mere inches between their faces.

“Hi,” he returns, eyes crossing in an effort to see her.

“I missed you.”

“I did, too, but you really need to get in line,” he says, glancing over her head at the front of the field where the stage is. “The Hs are up there, and the ceremony is about to start.”

El pecks him one more time, euphoric, and bounces away to take her place behind Emily Hope.

 **11:13     May 13     Mike Wheeler**  
[image attached]  
[image attached]  
[image attached]  
My girlfriend’s a college graduate

 **11:19     May 13     Mike Wheeler**  
Red looks so good on you  
Our new place’s bedroom walls are red, right?  
Fuck I can’t wait for New York

 

 


End file.
